The Fourth Annual Sober February
Join me on my annual challenge!
Happy Sober February! For the fourth year in a row - I’m committing to full sobriety during the shortest month of the year.
Sober February in 2023 means:
No Alcohol
No Marijuana or other party substances
No smoking or vaping of anything
No Social Media (Desktop allowed but all apps are deleted)
No Caffeine (Decaf’s okay <20mg)
FWIW - I don’t think I have addictions compulsory issues with any of these things I’m quitting. So what’s the reasoning for doing Sober Feb?
Originally it was inspired by Joe Rogan’s Sober October. I like the idea of a do-it-yourself abstinence challenge. The unintentional benefit of shutting out a few activities is that it opens up possibilities in the negative space. If I’m forced to avoid social media + substances at any cost, then what do I end up doing with my time?
Well here’s how the last three years went:
In 2020 - Thankfully it happened pre-Covid. No real insights except for the fact that I started watching a lot of TV. I binged two seasons of Succession rather easily.
In 2021 - Cindy and I had just moved to Hawaii so it wasn’t very difficult.
In 2022 - I tried to push it back 7 days because I wanted to party with friends in Salt Lake City. But that just resulted in caving two weeks later because the original resolution wasn’t firm enough.
This year we’re back in Salt Lake City and living with friends in a community house for skiing and snowboarding. And Sober February is a much needed stronghold for the new years resolutions that start loosening at the seams.
Tracking the Bad Habits
Starting mid-2022 I did start tracking my life more religiously using the Streaks app. Every day I would find myself putting in the effort of tracking if I “smoked” a joint or a cigarette, if I ingested weed / beer / alcohol, and other stats just to see how prevalent these bad habits formed.
Looking at Streaks, I ended up “smoking something” 29 times in the second half of 2022. Smoking anything, including a joint, is pretty bad for your lungs and I wanted to know how often I was killing them.
So for the full year extrapolated that was 84% of all days I didn’t smoke something. That’s still not very good. And this doesn’t count all the times I was vaping random e-cigarette pens in Europe!
Ultimately the goal is to quit smoking / vaping anything all together or get down to <10 times per year. Edibles and weed are great substitutes for joints. But joints are better for socializing.
Alcohol
On the other hand if I look at alcohol - I basically drank at least 1 beer / wine / alcoholic drink >63% of the time - almost 2/3rds of every day of the year. WTF that’s pretty crazy when you think about it! Why was I drinking so much?
One reason was that when we went to Europe - Cindy and I would have a glass of wine / beer every time we went out for dinner every day. The strong dollar coincided with cheap alcohol prices in Europe made a $3 glass of wine / beer too easy to resist!
This was the same year that I got really interested in Hazy IPAs and also watched the famous Huberman video on how bad even low to moderate alcoholic usage was for you. So now I’m trying to overall just drink less. I won’t buy beer in the store but will get a drink at dinner or the bar with friends if there’s something I want to try.
If I look at 2022 - I drank 3 or more drinks estimated at 35+ times over the year. So essentially once every 10 days I’d go out and have a few more drinks and get buzzed. This one I’m trying to bring down to <1 or 2 per month saved for special occasions with friends.
So overall - I have made a lot of progress in January. But I could feel myself slipping for February. Maybe that’s because I knew that sober February was coming and this past weekend I indulged myself just to prepare for a month of sobriety.
Coffee and Caffeine
The funny part comes with caffeine. Almost every person I’ve wanted to do Sober February with has been agreeable to join until I tell them about quitting caffeine as well. Then they all quickly backtrack.
Giving up caffeine to some people is like giving up your child. I didn’t know we (Americans?) were so dependent on caffeine. Even though I’ve switched over to become a daily expresso drinker myself last year, switching to decaf wouldn’t really kill me or my productivity.
Join The Challenge
Either way - if you feel a need to try something new this month - write down a few bad habits to quit for the whole month and join me in on sober Feb! It’s only four weeks and I would love to hear the insights on what new things you might have discovered in the meantime.